In vivid detail, the biographer of Karl Marx here tells the story of the German sociologist's 20-year struggle to complete his unfinished masterpiece. Begun in a two-room flat in London's Soho, the first volume of Das Kapital was published in 1867, to muted praise. But after Marx's death, the book went on to influence thinkers, writers, and revolutionaries from George Bernard Shaw to V.I. Lenin, and changed the political course of the 20th century. Francis Wheen's book is an "exhilarating read" (Sunday Telegraph, London), and shows that, far from being a dry economic treatise, Das Kapital is like a vast Gothic novel whose heroes are enslaved by the economic monster they created.

"As Wheen skillfully shows, there was an underlying love-hate relationship between Marx and capitalism. As early as the Manifesto, he had written of capitalism's operations with a sort of awe, describing how the bourgeoisie had revolutionized all hum and social and economic relations, and had released productive capacities of a sort undreamed-of in feudal times." óChristopher Hitchens